It was useful for me to let go of wanting to focus. If I think of childcare as a distraction from what I really want to do, I miss out on what I can get from childcare too. Instead, I’ve been looking for ways to make the most of this stop-and-go life.

Kaizen emphasizes reducing waste. What does mental waste look like when it comes to thinking with a toddler around?

I waste energy if I let my mind fill up with mental clutter. So:

Appointments go on my calendar so that I don’t have to worry about forgetting them, and a weekly review helps me remember to check the week ahead.

Near-term tasks go into my todo list. Tasks Free lets me quickly reprioritize tasks so that I know what to do the moment A- lets me unlatch and slip away.

Blog post ideas go into Markor so that I can write them in Markdown and export them to HTML for my blog.

Long-term ideas and notes go into Org Mode. It’s been super helpful to have step-by-step instructions and checklists for things I do infrequently.

Waste happens if I prioritize ineffectively. So:

Once A- is asleep, I quickly take care of personal and household tasks, and then work on my laptop. I can do phone tasks while I’m nursing her in bed, but laptop time is very rare. If I focus on improving my systems and making more things doable from my phone, the benefits compound.

Small tasks with small benefits tend to beat large tasks with large benefits, because of interruptions. I try to find ways to break large tasks down into small ones with incremental benefits. Many things can wait until next year.

Waste also happens if I repeat myself. So:

When I manage to have computer time, I slow down and write notes in an Org Mode file instead of trying to speed ahead and do everything before A- wakes up. This helps me resume my train of thought after the inevitable interruption. It also helps me put together blog posts, which means I can find things in my archive, help people, and maybe even learn from people’s comments.

If I’m thinking about a question or idea, I jot down keywords. That makes it easier to remember those thoughts and build on them. I scribble these on paper if I’m around A-, so that she can see me writing and so that she doesn’t get distracted by my phone. If a thought looks promising, I stick it in my pocket in case I want to refer to it during phone time.

Waste happens if I do low-value activities instead of high-value ones. It’s easy to get sucked into reading lots of social media or books on my phone, so I work on getting more value out of phone time. I can:

write

ssh to my web server or backup server, and code or run scripts – hard with a virtual keyboard and no swiping to type, but doable

organize pictures and other files

prepare an Emacs News summary

read e-books from the library, mainly looking for interesting parenting ideas to try or things to learn about early childhood education

Waste happens when I don’t notice, so it’s good to get enough sleep and to pay attention.

Waste happens when I forget, so it’s good to write, reflect, and organize my notes.

Waste happens when we stay too comfortable and when we push too hard. It’s good to work on finding the sweet spot – the zone of proximal development for A-.

I can reduce waste further by getting more value from my time. For example, being interested in making books for A- lets me get more out of reading books with A-. Writing about stuff lets me remember, and I might even be able to help or learn from other people.

This phase is temporary. Next year, A- will probably be more interested in playing with her peers, and she might be independent enough to participate in activities without me. The year after that, she’ll be old enough for school. I want to make the most of this time instead of rushing ahead. I guess that’s part of why I haven’t prioritized night weaning or finding a babysitter. There’s still plenty of potential to explore even with the setup, and it’s fun working with the constraints.

What could better look like?

Sleeping more predictably or more in sync: She seems to adjust her sleep cycle earlier if I go to sleep when she does instead of staying up to do my discretionary things, so maybe I can sacrifice a week or two of discretionary time to see if we can shift to using daytime better

Written note workflow: maybe snapping a quick picture and then referring to it when I type; maybe doing small sketchnotes that can be cleaned up by an app and included as images

Trying out other ssh apps to see which one I like the most, in case that makes it easier to code

Trying more things (new food, etc.), which could take a bit of planning

Lots of things to play with!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/dealing-with-thought-fragmentation-reducing-mental-waste/feed/0Making an 8-page 7″x4.25″ captioned photo book with Org Mode and LaTeXhttp://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/making-an-8-page-7x4-25-captioned-photo-book-with-org-mode-and-latex/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/making-an-8-page-7x4-25-captioned-photo-book-with-org-mode-and-latex/#respondSat, 17 Mar 2018 02:12:47 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29182
Here’s another technique that makes a simple photo book. I wanted to
make an 8-page book that could be printed 4 pages to a 8.5″x14″ sheet
(duplex, flip along the short edge), with a final page size of
7″x4.25″.

This file gets included in the LaTeX file for the children’s book.
Tweak it to change the appearance. In this example, I use black serif
text text on the left side of a picture, both occupying roughly half
of the page. I also experimented with using a different font this time, which you might need to install (for me, I did apt-get install texlive-fonts-extra).

Other notes

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/making-an-8-page-7x4-25-captioned-photo-book-with-org-mode-and-latex/feed/0Week ending 2018-03-10http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/week-ending-2018-03-10/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/week-ending-2018-03-10/#respondWed, 14 Mar 2018 08:25:27 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29181A- got a new conformer last week. Progress: she didn’t cry in the waiting room, although she still burst into tears as soon as she saw the ocularist. We’re continuing with the conformer approach instead of switching to a painted shell because A- still rubs the conformer out of her eye from time to time, and it’s easier to replace a conformer. Maybe we’ll switch when she’s closer to school age.

I asked her where she wanted to go for Field Trip Friday. She said, “Riverdale Farm. I miss that. I have fun. Big sheep make big noises.” So we went, and we enjoyed looking at the baby goats. We passed by the Children’s Book Bank, and I was delighted to find that you can take double the number of books on Fridays. I picked up a few more Seuss books.

We’ve been making more of an effort to explore and catalogue places so that we can make the most of Toronto’s resources. We checked out Baird Park, which has a playset with a short tunnel that A- actually worked up the courage to go through. She liked going down the twisty slide on my lap, and then graduated to going down the twisty slide at Lithuania Park with a little push. I posted a few park reviews in Google just in case other people find those notes handy, and I should find some way of organizing my own copy of the notes too.

A- has been having fun with both fine and gross motor skills. She practised using a ladle to pour and a butter knife to spread. She goose-stepped and danced.

A- can talk about more abstract things. She scribbled and said she was drawing “nervous.” One time, W- was carrying her up the stairs to change her diaper, and she was getting a little wriggly and distracted. He said, “Focus.” She said with enthusiasm, “Diaper!”

She likes being involved. When she was at the sink, she said with delight: “Yes! I’m busy!”

One time, she insisted that I carry her up bridal-style in my arms (which she accomplished by flopping in a certain way and protesting if I tried changing things). I was mystified, but it all became clearer once we got upstairs and she wanted me to read Emma to her. The Cozy Classics version has just twelve words, and “carry” is one of them. “Frank Churchill carry. Emma,” she said. Aha!

She often sings nursery rhymes and other songs. She sang part of “Mamma Mia” while dancing, and then obligingly repeated while I suppressed my laughter long enough to record her on video.

Little improvements:

W- set up a Synology DS718 network-attached storage server. Wheee! I feel more grown-up with proper backups. I set up borg backups for my server and my laptop. Next: Docker containers for testing the backups…

I set up lots of voice shortcuts to help me with groceries and with tracking. For example, I can say, “Okay Google, baby awake” and it will log that in my system. I explored Tasker’s Memento support, too.

I figured out how to use Org Mode and LaTeX to typeset drawing templates for children’s books, and I used that to make a book about smoothies. Next: photos, more layouts

Lots of tidying up in the basement, too. Whee!

I switched to writing in Markor on Android. I briefly enabled Markdown support in WordPress, but it was messing up some of my other posts, so I turned it off again.

I set up god-mode in Emacs, which does make phone use a bit easier.

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/week-ending-2018-03-10/feed/0Using exiftool to put date, rating, and title in photo filenameshttp://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/using-exiftool-to-put-date-rating-and-title-in-photo-filenames/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/using-exiftool-to-put-date-rating-and-title-in-photo-filenames/#commentsWed, 14 Mar 2018 08:13:38 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29180Now that we have a Synology backup server, I want to get better at keeping and organizing photos. I’ve got lots of pictures and videos of A- in Google Photos, but I don’t want to rely only on that. When Google eventually decommissions the service (no signs of this now, but you can never tell), I’d like to already have copies of my favourite photos and videos all prioritized and backed up instead of spending days wading through accumulated cruft.

I had previously added significant moments to a “Weekly highlights” album in the Google Photos app. I had also tried to select a number of those for “Level 2 highlights” and “Level 3 highlights” roughly approximating monthly and yearly filters. This was awkward, though, since Google Photos didn’t let me see which photos were already in an album or which timespans weren’t well represented. I wanted a five-star rating system so that I could gradually winnow images I liked, and I wanted tags for more flexibility.

The F-Stop Gallery app on Android seemed to be a quick way to sort through images, rate them, and tag them. I liked how it stored the metadata in the file instead of in a separate database. The bulk management tools were decent, although of course it would be even better to do things with fewer taps.

I downloaded ZIPs of my highlight albums and extracted them to a Samba share so that I could access them from my phone. I rated the level 3 highlights as 5 stars, level 2 as 3 stars, and weekly highlights as 2 stars, leaving the 4-star level for finer distinctions if I need to fiddle with things. Then I used cp -n (no clobber; don’t overwrite existing files) to copy the 5-star photos, then the 3-star photos, and lastly the 2-star photos. That way, even if a photo was in multiple albums, the file would have just the highest rating I assigned.

I can’t always rely on apps to index and search by the metadata in a file, so I like putting that information in the filename. A good filename might look like this:

2016-08-01-20-14-44 ### Relaxing on the deck #family.jpg

It starts with a date and time, since timelines make sense. I add one to the number of stars and convert that to # so that I can easily search for, say, ### to show me all entries that have at least two stars. This also creates a neat ASCII bar chart effect when looking at lists of filenames. I want to include the title if available, and any tags for easy searching as well.

Here’s the Bash script that takes an image file and renames it accordingly:

It was great to find out that I can pass Perl expressions to exiftool to modify the field value. I figured out that I could combine that with the /e flag for executable replacements so that I could generate a string of N+1 characters. While tinkering with the code, I accidentally used \1 instead of \$1 in my Org Mode block. That made a number such as 5 turn up as a scalar with a six-digit value, so I ended up with a really long line of #####... in my Org file. Emacs was definitely not happy. I ended up opening my Org file in vi so that I could delete the offending line. Anyway, I managed to recover from that and figure out what I needed to put in. Yay!

It would be pretty neat to have some kind of inotify thing watching my NAS inbox and processing files accordingly. In the meantime, I don’t mind running another script. We’ll see how this goes!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/2018-03-12-emacs-news/feed/0February 2018http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/february-2018/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/february-2018/#respondSun, 11 Mar 2018 14:17:22 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29177In addition to our usual field trips to the Science Centre and the ROM, we went to Riverdale Farm. A- named the animals and enjoyed talking about them, although she found the sheep a little loud. We also started visiting family more often, for both big things like Chinese New Year and A-‘s birthday as well as small things like an afternoon of hanging out.

A- wanted to build a Duplo tower so tall that she had to stand on a chair to add blocks to it. She got pretty good at inserting shapes into her sorter and screwing together the nuts and bolts in her toolkit.

She walked astride her balance bike all the way to the kitchen by herself. She carried empty containers on a tray. She danced a lot and imitated other aspects of music class. She enjoyed bouldering. She wanted to try out a life jacket while swimming, and she kicked her legs too. She picked up diving rings with her foot.

She sang Humpty Dumpty, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and Hey Diddle Diddle practically in full. I could prompt her to show me a sleepy face, a sad face, and so on. She talked about recent events and how she felt, often revisiting moments that were particularly significant to her. She echoed many of the things we often say, such as “Give it a try.” She asked for specific things using “I need…” and often thanked us.

She played more independently, often amusing herself for a number of minutes or toddling off to a different room while telling us to stop. She confidently touched different textures in books. She asked to be pushed faster while in the playground swing, and she wanted to go down the twisty slide.

Her eye exam went well. The pediatrician is working on referrals to Sick Kids for dentistry and endocrinology.

We replaced our printer with an HP M277dw, and I learned how to use it to make short books for A-. I figured out an Emacs News workflow that I can do entirely from my phone, and I set up Syncthing for my files too. We organized A-‘s toys and clothes into IKEA Trofast drawers. I uploaded old photos to Google Photos. Progress!

March: A new conformer, a consultation with the anesthesia dentist, more children’s books, and lots of time with A-. We’ll figure this out!

I imported the PNG layers into MediBang Paint on a Samsung Note 8 Android phone, and then:

imported photos

traced them

painted and shaded them

hid the text layers

exported one PNG per spread to QuickPic, renamed them, and uploaded them to Dropbox, because I couldn’t figure out how to export to Dropbox directly

Layer folders were handy for organizing spread-related images. I couldn’t seem to move all of the layers in a layer folder together on Android, but the iPad was able to do so. If I didn’t have the iPad handy, I combined the layers by exporting a PNG and then importeing it back into MediBang Paint.

This was a decent setup that allowed me to draw and paint even when I was in bed nursing A- and waiting for her to fall asleep. I held the phone with one hand and rotated the canvas as needed so that it was easier for me to draw lines with my right. Because of the awkward position and the small screen size, the lines are not as smooth as I might like, but the important thing is that they’re there. Whee! =)

It turns out to be possible to use the free MediBang Pro drawing program under Wine on Linux to import the PSD and save it to the cloud. I was also sometimes able to switch to drawing with iPad Pro with Pencil, but it was harder to find time to do that because that usually made A- want to draw too.

Anyway, after I drew and exported the PNGs, the next step was to…

Convert the drawn spreads back to pages and combine them with the text

Here’s some code that combines the drawing and the text. Keeping the drawing and the text separate until this stage (instead of exporting the PNGs with the text) makes it easier to change the text later by recreating the text PNGs and running this step.

This code pairs up the drawn pages into a PDF that can be printed duplex. Make sure to choose the option to flip along the short edge. I hard-coded the page orders for 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-page booklets.

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/using-org-mode-latex-beamer-and-medibang-paint-to-make-a-childrens-book/feed/3Week ending 2018-03-02http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/week-ending-2018-03-02/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/week-ending-2018-03-02/#respondMon, 05 Mar 2018 15:42:25 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29174We went to Riverdale Farm this week. A- was a little wary of the sheep, but she eventually got more used to the noise. We visited her grandmother. A- ate lots of strawberries and practised fetching things.

A- had lots of fun spinning around and around, whether it was on the platform at the Ontario Science Centre or in the kitchen at home. With a tray, too, for extra challenge points! She enjoyed rock-climbing, and so did I. She walked most of the way to the subway, too, and she walked astride her balance bike from the living room all the way to the kitchen.

She sang all of Humpty Dumpty and Hey Diddle Diddle, and has been dancing and playing instruments “just like music class.”
We played with catching and blowing feathers, too.

A- had a tantrum because she didn’t want me to go to sleep. I think adjusting her sleep schedule will have to be more about waking her up rather than trying to nudge her to sleep earlier. On the plus side, she echoed some of the sentences from the books we’ve been reading: “One step, another, fall down, and then pick myself up and try it again.” “I know it’s hard.”

I figured out how to make books! I drew a 12-page book about night weaning and an 8-page book about A-‘s conformer. I’m looking forward to making more, especially as I collect ideas and fine-tune my workflow. I managed to do Emacs News entirely on my phone, too, which bodes well for traveling without my laptop. I also worked on documenting files to back up.

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/2018-03-04-emacs-news/feed/0Planning a few activities for A-http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/planning-a-few-activities-for-a/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/planning-a-few-activities-for-a/#respondSun, 04 Mar 2018 08:33:27 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29172Registration opens this week for City of Toronto recreation programs, so I’ve been thinking about what to experiment with next. For this phase (2-3 years old), A- will probably be focusing on learning about:

independence

movement

language and music

emotions

socialization

the world around us

What have I learned from the classes we’ve taken and the memberships we have?

I was not keen on the Recreation Discovery with Caregiver class that we signed up for during the fall term, since it was hard to wake up A- in the morning and the class didn’t offer much beyond what we could get at drop-in centres.

Between a long trip to the Philippines and a late-waking A-, we missed many sessions of the Smart Start music classes at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Even though she mostly clung to me during the sessions that we did manage to attend, she somehow absorbed plenty from the class. At home, she’s been singing, dancing, galloping, marching, banging rhythm sticks together, playing on the piano and the xylophone, blowing into the recorder, tapping on the table, and even arranging chairs for sitting on – “Just like music class,” she exclaims. I think it’s worth a significant premium over city music classes or the 15-minute circle times at free drop-ins, considering A- gets exposed to well-maintained instruments and a highly skilled music teacher. I’ve picked up more melodic variants of the nursery rhymes I learned elsewhere, learned a few Canadian folk songs, and grown more comfortable with singing. If I can find a summer session in the afternoon, I might consider that.

For spring, I signed A- up for gymnastics classes through the City of Toronto. She’s gotten a lot more active, and I think it might be nice to explore what she can do with more facilities. I hope there’ll be a large padded mat and a few activities for balance and coordination. Even if she ends up being mostly reserved during class, I know she’ll pick up a lot by observing the teacher and the other kids, and I can set up things at home so that she can practice. The age range for the class is pretty big (2 – 5 years old), so I hope there’ll be other toddlers, a small class, and/or a teacher good at managing such a large range.

A- likes swimming too. I think we’ll keep that pretty informal for now, since it’s easy for me to take her to various pools depending on the gaps in our week and when she wakes up. She had fun kicking while wearing a flotation device, and she’s also curious about blowing bubbles. I can probably spend the next few months bringing her to places with shallow toddler pools, and that should take care of swimming without putting too much pressure on our schedule. Besides, this way, I can invite other families along.

The city also had a few science- and engineering-type activities for little kids, but I can probably do those things on my own for now. Likewise, there are private companies that offer cooking classes for toddlers, but I can do that at home.

The High Park Nature Centre also has programs for kids this age. I’ll just start by taking her on the trails often. I’ll step up nature education when A- is about three or so, probably drawing from books like Discovering Nature with Young Children (and the rest of the Young Scientist series) and Small Wonders: Nature Education for Young Children. The nature centre has the advantage of experience and animal encounters, so we’ll look into that when she’s ready for more structure and lots of hiking.

Our Ontario Science Centre membership has definitely paid off. We go almost every week, often meeting up with Jen and E-. A- loves the pretend supermarket, the water table, the music section, and the spinning thing. I renewed that one for another two years.

I sprung for another year of the Curator’s Circle membership level for the Royal Ontario Museum. I made good use of the guest privileges last year by making it my default location for inviting people out, and maybe I’ll get to do more of that this year. A- often requests to go to the museum after music class, since it’s right next door. She’s still not keen on the drop-in centre with toys, but she likes the animal exhibits and can point to many large animals when prompted.

We went to Riverdale Farm a couple of times this year. She’s beginning to be more interested in the animals there, although she’s still wary of the sheep. (“Sheep big! Sheep noisy!”) Worth the occasional trip out even though we haven’t made it to any of the farmer demos, and easy to combine with a short walk to the Children’s Book Bank.

A- liked going to the bouldering gym, too. There’s one near us that has a small kiddie area that has a slide. It’s a three-person affair, since W- needs to hold A- up and I need to climb to the top so that I can lift her over the ledge and slide down with her. I pay for a pass for her, a pass for me, and my shoe rental, and I get to have a short workout climbing too. It’s good for her to see us trying, falling, picking ourselves up, and learning. J- goes to the same gym, so more modeling there too. We’ve gone twice. I’m up for going again when W- and J-‘s schedules permit.

Some playgrounds also have climbing features, and some even use rock-climbing holds. I remember seeing them at Regent Park and at Withrow Park. When the weather warms up, we’ll go on a tour of playgrounds.

What do I need to learn about or prepare in order to support her learning?

Music: I can mix in more nursery rhymes and folk songs as she gets the hang of the ones we covered before. She’s also getting interested in instruments, so it’s good to both model having fun playing and let her explore. She’s interested in dancing, so we’ll do more of that pancreas, too.

Language: Time to dust off those Ready for Reading recommendations and request award-winning children’s books from the library! A- loves reading, and I absorb more ideas about art and verse as I read things over and over. I’d also like to establish a steady rhythm of making books myself, too. The fridge magnets and the availability of print in everyday life encourage A-‘s interest in identifying letters, and we can continue to let her take the lead.

Art: This phase focuses on making marks, exploring materials, and describing actions. I can bring drawing supplies when we visit her grandmother. I can set out large pieces of drawing paper. I can present her drawing and playdough supplies attractively, and I can make them more pleasurable to use. I can model more drawing in front of her. The Trofast drawers we set up in the living room are doing a good job of organizing A-‘s Duplo collection, and A- often plays with Duplo (building towers or playing with the playground). I can review Growing Artists for ideas to take advantage of her new capabilities.

Toileting: I think we can redo Oh Crap potty training whenever we’re ready. No rush. A- figured out how to get through a whole diaper-free month without accidents, but our long trip got her used to wearing diapers again. It’s a bit cool, but maybe I can offer her a choice between cloth diapers or going diaperless at home, or I can do more of a conceptual nudge through books. She’s interested in being a big kid at the moment, so it might be a good time.

Dressing: She’s working on more fine motor skills. I might be able to get away without fancy dressing frames or toys, since she can practice with my pajamas and my shoelaces. Although if we make it to the EarlyON centre one of these days, there’s a toy with a nice big button that she could use for practice.

Physical activity: Lots of walking and going to playgrounds, plus the gymnastics classes I signed up for and the occasional bouldering session too. I can also encourage her to carry heavy things.

Independent play: This fits naturally into our household routines. I just need to keep recognizing opportunities for her to go and explore.

Cooking and eating: She’s getting more comfortable with a butter knife. She can cut with a serrated knife or even a pointy knife if I carefully guide her hand-over-hand. If I look up cooking class ideas for toddlers, I’ll probably find more things we can do together. It might be time to get colour-coded measuring cups like the ones my sister got for her kids. She’s okay with tongs, too, so I’ll pick up training chopsticks as well.

Sleep: Most toddler activities are in the morning. A- and I both seem to be night owls. It’s been nice letting her sleep in, but maybe I should take the hit, deal with a few weeks or months of slight crankiness, and move our schedules earlier. Anyway, we’ll see how things work out as she gets older. If she accepts our nudges to night-wean, that will probably change things too.

So much to learn this year. Fun fun fun! It seems to work out pretty well if I let her take the lead, and even better if I’ve prepared the opportunities and learned more about supporting her learning. This is totally not about turning her into some kind of prodigy. It’s more fun to be a kid, and it’s better for her too. I’m just doing this because I’m having a lot of fun learning with and from her. :) We’ll see what we can learn and share!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/planning-a-few-activities-for-a/feed/0Making books for A-http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/making-books-for-a/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/03/making-books-for-a/#commentsSat, 03 Mar 2018 17:34:41 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29171A- loves being read to. She picks up new words and ideas from the books we read, requests both favourites and new books again and again, and can identify objects in photographs and drawings. I borrowed a few children’s books from the library in case reading about upcoming changes or challenges helps her understand. The books were okay, but didn’t quite fit the words we use or the way we like to handle things. So this week, I decided to make my own books for A-, especially since there are few books that cover things like microphthalmia.

The first book I made was about night weaning, since we might have to do that in preparation for dental surgery under anaesthesia. I sketched it using ZoomNotes on my iPad, exported the SVG, tinkered with it in Inkscape, exported PNGs, combined the PNGs with ImageMagick, and created a 12-page PDF with 7″x8.5″ pages. That let me print the book out on legal-size paper (8.5″x14″), 2 pages per sheet, duplex printing set to flip on the short side, using this page order:
12, 1, 2, 11, 10, 3, 4, 9, 8, 5, 6, 7. I folded each sheet in half. Instead of hand-sewing the binding, I just taped the pages together. And just like that, I had a book that I could page through properly: “No More Nursing, Time to Sleep.”

I read the new book to A-. She asked me to reread it several times. She pointed to the book and said, “A-!” She pointed to the stick figure for me and said, “Mama!” Success!

The next thing I wanted to try was printing in colour. We recently replaced our printer with an HP M277dw colour laser printer that could print duplex, so I was looking forward to giving that a try. I wanted to make a book about the conformer in A-‘s little eye. This time, I drew the pages of the book using layers in Medibang Paint. I drew on the bus home from Riverdale Farm, working around a sleeping A- snuggled in my carrier. I exported each layer as a PNG, used ImageMagick to convert pairs of pages into what I needed to print (page order: 8, 1, 2, 7, 6, 3, 4, 5), combined those into a PDF. I couldn’t figure out how to get the HP app to properly scale the document and print in duplex, but printing from Linux worked fine. I quickly had another book in my hands: “My Conformer.”

She’s starting to echo phrases from the to books, and it’s been only a few days. Wow!

I’m working on a third book now. Time for something fun: “Let’s Make a Smoothie,” since she enjoys making and drinking them. She already knows all the words, so this is more about enjoyment. This time, I’m going to make a workflow that lets me draw on two-page spreads. I don’t have any wide drawings planned yet, but it could be handy for later. I made an Inkscape template to help me keep margins in mind. I learned how to use Medibang Paint’s folders to organize all the layers, and I’m getting the hang of digitally tracing and painting the photos I took.

I’m looking forward to making even more books and refining my workflow along the way. Here are a few things I want to try:

A- was so active. She liked dancing by herself or with us, sometimes inviting us by singing part of “Shall We Dance.” When we went swimming for her birthday, she picked up rings with her arms and feet, happily wore a flotation device, and kicked in a reasonable approximation of swimming. She walked astride her balance bike out of arms reach and all the way from the living room to the kitchen. She was interested in rockclimbing, especially after we strapped on the smallest pair of shoes at the climbing gym. (Still a bit big, but manageable.) She liked the new lights from IKEA, and got the hang of turning them on and off by herself.

A- regularly used prepositional phrases, saying things like “A- put fish cracker in mouth.” She went through a phase of saying “I don’t like it,” but is back to asking specifically for what she wants. I can say “Show me sleepy” and other adjectives from her favourite books, and she’ll do it. She picked up more social graces, too – she said “Excuse me” after passing gas. She talked about things that happened and how she felt, like when she accidentally dropped her potty and she was upset. We went to the Children’s Book Bank and picked up a nursery rhyme book and a book about Chinese ceramics by the artist who drew McDull.

It’s been a musical week as well. She was looping over “Happy birthday to you” and “Muvili zuma zuma.” She arranged chairs like in music class, had us sit in them, and did a few of the songs and rhymes. She was interested in banging on the piano, tapping the rhythm sticks, playing percussion on the table, and blowing on the recorder. “Just like music class,” she said.

A- enjoyed the Chinese New Year party at Uncle Morgan and Auntie Cathy’s. She loved going up and down the stairs with Uncle Morgan. She even have everyone goodbye hugs. During the week, we visited Popo for a relaxed afternoon. A- ate lots of grapes and learned a few Cantonese words. We went swimming with Jen and E-, and we had a late lunch with Eric afterwards. A- ate lots of fries. We also went to the Science Centre with Joy and J-.

The pediatrician is going to see about referrals to Sick Kids dentistry and endocrinology. More tests ahead, but that’s okay, we can handle this.

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/2018-02-26-emacs-news/feed/0Scribe and tinkerhttp://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/scribe-and-tinker/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/scribe-and-tinker/#respondThu, 22 Feb 2018 15:01:01 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29167I’ve been figuring out more about what tickles my brain and what I want to do with my life.

On one hand, I’m a scribe. I like extracting, organizing, and connecting ideas. I like getting stuff out of my head and into a form that I can work with or share with other people. I often like helping get stuff out of other people’s heads too. This explains my fascination with blogging, sketchnoting, personal knowledge management, and processes. To get better at this, I can focus on skills like:

Asking questions

Finding resources

Making sense

Connecting and building on ideas

Organizing

Communicating

Archiving

On the other hand, I’m a tinker. I like tweaking things to make them better. It’s not about big inventions, but small, continuous improvements. This explains my fascination with Emacs, Quantified Self, open source, and general geeking around. To get better at this, I can focus on skills like:

Seeing problems and possibilities

Estimating, prioritizing, and evaluating

Setting up experiments

Connecting ideas

Learning techniques

Coding

Tweaking physical things

If I look at the intersection of being a scribe and being a tinker, that explains my interest in:

What would it look like to be very, very good at these things? It’s quite convenient that I’m into knowledge work, since I can learn from millennia of people passionate about that. Tinkering shows up in entrepreneurship and invention, so I have plenty of role models there, too. I could probably spend a lifetime learning as much as I can from Benjamin Franklin and similar people.

How does parenting influence this? What can I gain from being the primary caregiver of a young child?

I’ve taken advantage of my push towards externalizing memory to work out a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly journaling workflow that works for me, and a way to think about questions in the scattered moments I have for myself. It took a bit of figuring out and there are things I still want to improve about my process. Chances are that there are other similarly-inclined people who could benefit. I wonder what things could be like if we could get better at thinking, capturing, and sharing at this stage. I don’t expect that I’ll come up with some brilliant insights. Most of my notes are about everyday life or my own questions. Still, I notice that this process seems to be good for my mental health, and it’s okay for me to explore ideas slowly especially if I get better at building on ideas instead of going around in circles. I can let the tough meaning-making be handled by people like Pulitzer-prize journalists (surely there must be quite a few who have also been or will become primary caregivers) and people who have different life arrangements (like part-time daycare), and I can focus on the questions I’m particularly curious about or the things that are uncommon about our experiments.

As for tinkering, there are tons of improvement opportunities exposed by the demands of parenting. If I keep track of the pain points/opportunities and work on improving my skills, I’ll probably grow at just the right pace. It would be interesting to improve my quick-experiment rate. Reading and thinking give me lots of things to try in terms of parenting, and talking to other people might help a lot too. W- is a good mentor for quick DIY and household things. It’s a little harder to do quick programming tweaks at the moment, but that can wait until I can concentrate more. I’ve set up my phone so that I can do some things through it, so I can consider the tradeoff between coding on my phone versus using the time to write.

I think I can make this work so that the time and energy I’ll devote to A- over the next couple of years can count for other goals, too. The more clearly I understand myself, the more effectively I can use my time and attention. I’m looking forward to seeing where writing more can take me, since I can do that while A-‘s nursing. During the day, it could be good to explore improvements to our physical environment and our processes, since A- can appreciate those too. There’ll be time for other things later, as A- becomes more capable and more independent. Onward!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/scribe-and-tinker/feed/0Week ending 2018-02-16http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/week-ending-2018-02-16/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/week-ending-2018-02-16/#respondWed, 21 Feb 2018 04:07:13 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29166The dentist recommended taking A- to an anesthesia dentist because she’s concerned that A-‘s teeth are worn down to the pulp and that there might be a hole that affects a nerve. The dentist she referred me to has an 8-hour no food or liquid fasting requirement for treatment instead of allowing breastmilk up to 4 hours before and clear liquids up to 2 hours before. A- still nurses through the night, so I may have to find another dentist, night wean her, or put all of us through a very miserable day. We’re hoping to get a referral to Sick Kids, since with all the other things going on with her, we want the anesthesiologist to have lots of experience with toddlers with other conditions.

The ocularist appointment was more straightforward. A- will get a new conformer in two weeks. We’re going to continue with the conformer approach instead of getting a painted shell because A- still takes her conformer out every so often. We nearly lost her current one. Conformers are cheaper and easier to replace. We’ll just put up with the occasional question from curious strangers (who can sometimes be a bit awkward or even rude, but I’ll just chalk that up to them being off-balance).

We visited her Po Po and Gung Gung for a Chinese New Year party. She had lots of fun hanging out with her Uncle Morgan, Auntie Cathy, and M-. We bought a Japanese cheesecake to serve for her birthday, and she actually blew the candle all by herself. She was very chatty and interactive, hiding jigsaw puzzle pieces in her sleeves and distributing or collecting them as directed, giving people high fives, playing with trucks, and scarfing down a decent amount of food.

We also visited Joy and J-. We all read books together and played with the toy kitchen. A- shared her cereal with J- and sampled her quesadilla, although she wasn’t particularly curious about the pinakbet.

A- easily named and inserted shapes into the sorter. It’s been quite a while since she last played with it and she used to need regular hints, but I guess something just clicked. Duplo clicked for her, too. She got interested in building tall towers (even standing on a chair to do so) and in simulating playgrounds.

Language highlights this week: “Wow” (in reaction to the printer and other awesome things), and “Give it a try” (which she said to me when I told her the bananas were still green). She’s been singing a lot, too. Muvili Zuma Zuma, Humpty Dumpty, Happy Birthday to You, even the song I made up for the swing… We made it to music class and picked up a variant of “Love My Baby,” and we went to the ROM afterwards because she wanted to see the animals.

At the playground, she wanted to be bounced up and down very quickly on the spring toys. She’s getting pretty good at asking for what she wants!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/week-ending-2018-02-16/feed/0Thinking about impacthttp://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/thinking-about-impact/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/thinking-about-impact/#respondTue, 20 Feb 2018 15:36:42 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29165In preparation for possibly making it to a conversation tomorrow about quantified impact, I’ve been thinking about the impact I want my experiments to have and how I might be able to observe and measure them.

I realized that I’m less interested in looking at my impact on the wider world and more interested in looking at the impact on myself. I’m also interested in the impact on my family. This is partly due to the influence of Stoicism’s focus on the things that I can control, partly the freedom of not having external performance reviews, and partly an experimental belief that if I take care of my own life and share what I’m learning with others, wider impact will follow. I don’t need to seek it prematurely. I can focus instead on having a solid foundation to build on.

If I evaluated impact based on the outcomes for A-, I would leave that too vulnerable to chance (what if A- died unexpectedly?) or conflict (what if A- wanted a different path?). It feels more right to focus on doing my part well, and to evaluate myself accordingly. If other things work out well, that’s a nice bonus, and keeping an eye on how those things are going can help me check if I’m on track or drifting.

With that in mind, what kind of impact do l want for my experiments, big and small?

Deeper appreciation of life, meaning: My biggest experiment at the moment is parenting. Based on research, parenting is likely to increase feelings of satisfaction and purpose, and will probably be worth the reduced autonomy and increased vulnerability. It’s not so much about pleasure as it is about eudaimonia.

Deeper appreciation of W- and other people: Research is pessimistic on the effect of parenting on marital satisfaction and social connection, but I might be able to counter those effects by paying attention thoughtfully. I’ve certainly developed a deeper appreciation of W- over the past few years, and I feel like I’m getting to know Toronto better too. Parenting lets me see my family and my in-laws in a new light. I like being able to remember that everyone was a baby once, too, and I like being able to appreciate other people more.

Practice in equanimity: Parenting brings plenty of opportunities to apply philosophy to life. I like wasting less energy on frustration and directing more energy towards paying attention and moving forward. I’ve been able to keep my cool in varied situations, and now I’m working on being able to respond thoughtfully and creatively in the moment.

Push to learn and grow: I’m taking advantage of my desire to help A- by learning more about child development, early childhood education, health, science, and other things. I’m sure I’ll learn about lots of random topics along the way. I’m trading a bit of self-direction for motivation and pushes out of my comfort zone. I could start tracking this by writing down what I’m learning about.

Experiences, empathy: Not only with W- and A-, but with other people too.

Reduced friction, increased capabilities, increased effects: It’s good to deal with constraints like sleep disruption and limited attention, since I can find the rough spots and figure out ways to improve them.

Good boundaries, assertiveness, deliberation: I’m learning more about making decisions, asserting myself, and changing my mind as needed.

Shared notes, possible business ideas, credibility: Other people might benefit from what I’m learning or doing.

Increased Emacs community, learning from each other: I’m glad I can do Emacs News. Looking forward to having more brain space so that I can contribute tweaks too, since playing with Emacs improves my capabilities and tickles my brain.

The book All Joy and No Fun promises to be an interesting summary of the research into the effects of parenting on parents.

If I can be more thoughtful about the effects I want (or need to watch out for) from the various choices I can make, then I might be able to make better decisions or invest a little effort and get even better results. It’s fun thinking about these things!

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/2018-02-19-emacs-news/feed/1January 2018http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/january-2018/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/january-2018/#respondFri, 16 Feb 2018 19:37:31 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29162It was one of those big months that somehow manage to contain so much.

We reshot our family picture because my dad wanted us to all wear Columbia clothes. We spent a few days relaxing at home and enjoying family time. Then my dad slipped into delirium and we took him to the hospital, where he died. The cremation, wake, and inurnment were all wonderful celebrations of an amazing life. I’ve written about most of the things I want to learn from my dad’s example and that I want to pass on to A-. I look forward to seeing how they work out in practice.

Most of the paperwork is underway. There’s dealing with the reconfiguration of our family dynamics, too. There’s a big gap where my dad used to be, of course. On the plus side, I have an even better appreciation of the strengths of my mom and my sisters. We’ll get through this.

A- had a grand time hanging out with her cousins, aunts, and grandparents. She figured out how to sit down and cross her legs. She liked bouncing on the bed and falling down forwards and backwards. She mastered the well-timed shrug. She peeled and ate lots of tiny oranges. She asked Lola and Tita Kathy to read her lots of books. She got over her anxiety about dolls. She often hugged people and accepted hugs.

The flights home were quite manageable, especially since we had the luxury of empty seats beside us during the Incheon-Toronto flight. Sleep deprivation, sniffles, and jet lag hit us hard on our return, but things got mostly back to normal after a couple of weeks.

At home, she quickly went through her favourite activities. She figured out how to build an 8-block-high tower and delighted in knocking it down using different parts of her body. We figured out how to dress for winter and have been making

A-‘s language capabilities really took off. She started saying things like “Thank you,” “You did it!”, and “Give it a try.” She explicitly imitated us: “A- make coffee just like Daddy make coffee.” She picked up lots of adjectives and modifiers: “very very sweet oranges.” She learned how to talk about negation: “Nobody,” “Tita Ching no wear glasses. Only Lola wear glasses.” She talked about recent events and anticipated upcoming ones. She even tried her hand at negotiation and persuasion: “Blueberries! (nod nod) That’s okay. That’s okay.”

February will be about settling in again and taking care of A-‘s medical appointments. I also want to spend some time rethinking my workflow considering our recent phone and tablet upgrades, and to think about where other upgrades might make sense.

]]>http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/january-2018/feed/0Week ending 2018-02-09http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/week-ending-2018-02-09/
http://sachachua.com/blog/2018/02/week-ending-2018-02-09/#respondTue, 13 Feb 2018 00:24:12 +0000http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=29161Gross motor: A- practised walking forward on her balance bike. It was just a few steps, but hey, progress! She also enjoyed swimming. We had the toddler pool all to ourselves for a while, and she enjoyed walking in the shallow water and even kneeling just enough to dip her ears into the water. At the Science Centre, she had lots of fun following E-‘s example and running up and down corridors, climbing stairs, and so on.

Fine motor: She can screw together the oversized nuts and bolts in her toolkit. She was interested in the Duplo blocks. She liked adding a paper butterfly to the ROM exhibit.

Language: She used the word “need” to ask for something. Her first request? “I need a hug.” She thanked me afterwards, too. She’s getting pretty good at talking about recent events, like pointing to the fridge and saying, “Daddy bought new eggs.” Ithink she can talk about how she felt, too. For example, a kid accidentally knocked her down at the Science Centre. When we were chatting about the day during her bath, we got to that part and she said “A- sad.”

Household: She insisted that we make muffins, and she even brought out the muffin tin.

Social: She had such a great day on Friday hanging out with Jen and E-, and she was so excited to see W- that she was squeaking as she ran to the door. Joy gave us a kitchen playset, which A- liked. A- also put up with me having coffee with Eric and chatting about leadership. We made it out to music class, but she was pretty reserved. At home, she loved playing games with me (peekaboo, moving tunnels, fall down, toss hair/pompom).

Independence: She insisted on privacy while using the potty. She wanted to do most things by herself. She put on her own coat a few times.

Other: She passed her eye exam – perfect vision and healthy pressure in her right eye so far. Amusingly, she was indifferent to the first sheet of stickers offered by the doctor, but she quickly snatched the second sheet. She enjoyed hanging out at the family centre afterwards.

Us: I donated more clothes through the EarlyON family and child centre. We got a couple of IKEA Trofast units to organize A-‘s clothes and toys. Gradual decluttering!